The State of Minority- and Women- Owned ... - Cleveland.com

Anecdotal Evidence of Disparities in the City of Cleveland’s Market Area
There was overwhelming support for some sort of small business set-aside to assist M/FBEs and
other small firms to compete for prime contracting opportunities.
Some form of set aside.… So that you’re not always at the mercy of the prime contractor
choosing the firms.
To the extent that firm size is relevant to the ability to perform, there was close to universal
support for disaggregating contracts into separate scopes of work or putting together smaller
packages of scopes.
They group an entire contract under a certain umbrella. And that umbrella says that
contract is eight million dollars. The [industry] portion may be three hundred thousand
which bonding is not that difficult to get. But because they group it like that you have to
get an eight million dollar bond and they send you through all kinds of [hoops] to try to
get that. And we’ve asked that the contract be broken up.… [The Northeast Ohio
Regional Sewer District is now unbundling contracts and] it’s going to be a marked
difference in, in firms getting in minority and otherwise.
Breaking the contracts up into smaller portions is … the easiest thing.… It’s more work
for [the City].… I understand where they’re coming from to manage all these little
contracts. but you can get a project manager just like you’re paying them over there to
manage the project for you. So that minorities can get a piece of the pie. We’re not asking
for them to give us something.
Unbundling. Unbundling.… Then I compete on my own terms.
They used to put them out in bits and pieces. But … you’ve got to go to the City Council
to get approval, which is not the easiest thing in the world. So, if I have a project and I’ve
got to go to the Council eight times to get approval [that’s a huge disincentive]. And what
happens if six of them get approved and two don’t? Now the whole project’s shot. So
now what they do is they put it all together in this huge project. And then they bid it out
at once.
Unbundling, dividing the contracts [into what’s need to crate prime contract
opportunities].
We’ve been in the City of Cleveland schools. They broke the projects down. We were
doing the [type of work]. So, what they did was instead of putting a site plan all together
they broke the packages down, interior, exterior … make it affordable for the MBEs,
SBEs, whoever can get on these jobs.
5. Barriers to Obtaining Surety Bonds
Access to surety bonds on an equal basis remains a significant barrier.
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